Over the last seven days, a national drama unfolded on television, beginning with the arrest of anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare...as Hazare enters the eighth day of his anti-corruption hunger strike, media experts too are wondering if the Indian press has lost its sense of perspective. The non-stop coverage has led to a near blackout of other news events of importance.

The Public Diplomacy Division of the Ministry of External Affairs was established in May 2006. So far, this Division has reached out more to countries where the Indian diaspora is concentrated and has sought to attract them to come to India and study through the “Know India Program”.

For long, India in the imagination of the world remained the land of the Taj Mahal, Khajuraho temples...Innovation, seen as a core dimension of economic change, was not a word associated with India. A newly published coffee table book titled “The India Idea”, challenges this viewpoint.

India is to set up a central foreign aid agency to prevent funds from being misused and delays in aid delivery. India's aid commitments have soared in recent years as the country seeks to improve its strategic, political and economic clout on the world stage, especially as China extends its hand.

When outsiders think about South Asia, they typically picture a region that’s wracked by violent religious extremism, a place where groups like the Taliban, al-Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba are active and deadly. Then there’s the image of clandestine nuclear proliferation...

Hu Yuandong of UNIDO...says the focus of the project is job creation, poverty alleviation and environmental protection. Xiao has made clear that the $3bn investment is not coming from the Chinese government, but rather from various funds "around the world" - even from the Middle East. But it would be difficult not to see this as a smart move by China and an extension of its soft power.

A rare cultural exchange will take place ...when a group of young filmmakers from Nagaland... visit the United States ....The seeds for this trip to America were planted last December when [Profs[ Bailey and Layton were invited to Nagaland for two weeks to foster international relations and promote the arts as a form of cultural diplomacy.